Struggling with frugality, debt, parenting, and weight

January 2015 Early Retirement Progress

We contributed $8,522.37 this month to our retirement accounts We lost $2,653.39 in investment value this month.

January was an exceptional month for contributions: it was a three paycheck month for Dad, and his company contributed $2250 to our HSA for us on January 1. This influx lets us put all of our contributions to investments (minimum of 2k in cash). I also redeemed a little bit (about $64) of our Fidelity cash back points into our Fidelity account.

There are two more 3-paycheck months this year thanks to Jan1 falling on a Friday – Dad’ll get paid on Dec 31 for his last paycheck of the year. I had to figure this out because there was less taken out of his paycheck for daycare FSA and I wondered why (the year still has 52 weeks, but instead of 26 pay periods like normal, he has 27 pay periods).

We have a good start on our contributions for the year, but the markets have been going down. I don’t expect to get 6% gains every year, just averaged over the 10 or so years we’re actually contributing. 2015 may turn out to be a down year, but we were well ahead in 2014 to make up for it!

2015 Totals

In 2015, so far, we’ve contributed $8522.37 (12.17% of our goal of 70k), and we’ve lost $2653.39 in investment value (-13.10% of our planned total).

This includes our employer matches and employer contribution to our HSA ($2250). We won’t have as much most months, just over 5k for most months this year – then just over 6k when we start setting aside money for our Roths later this year. The HSA contribution from Dad’s company really helps though – but we can’t invest most of it – we need to have at least 2k in the “cash” part of our HSA to be able to invest anything.